Saddleback Ski Program Unleashes The Inner You

Ha! Easy and fun-filled are terms that usually do not apply to beginning ski classes, yet this style of snow-job advertising is typical of ski-school hype.

Ski lessons are big business, but rarely will a ski area`s brochure say how a ski school will perform this fun-filled miracle of easy education. There are exceptions, however, and one of these is Saddleback Ski Area, near Rangeley, Me.

Of course, you will have fun here, too, according to the advertisement. But right after it says that, Saddleback lets you know its program is different--even radical.

``Sensory awareness and concentration exercises are used to explore the technical skills involved in skiing,`` the ad says. ``By focusing awareness on skis, snow and body, a skier learns to read the terrain and move with the mountain rather than struggle against it.``

``How fast you learn or if you have fun is up to the instructor,`` says Greg Sweetser, technical director of the Saddleback Learning Center.

``Instructors have to take a lot of responsibility for the student. If someone doesn`t do the maneuver, I look at it as more my fault than the student`s.

``Every student is a challenge to the instructor to see how clear and concise and how good a message he or she can get across to the student,``

Sweetser said. ``An instructor can`t have the attitude that it`s not his fault the student didn`t learn. But that doesn`t mean I never feel frustration when teaching.`

ACCORDING TO Kit Caspar, the director of the learning center, Saddleback has been pioneering new ``positive`` techniques in ski instruction. ``The people who are having fun,`` he said, ``are skiing as children. Skiing with an open mind and relaxed bodies, they will absorb instruction as they go along.`` Sweetser said.

``There is always stress in learning, but when the instructor can point out the moves the skier is doing well, there is less stress and fear of doing something wrong.``

Sweetser also says the instructor`s ability to tune into the student`s

``learning mode`` is the biggest factor in making learning fun.

``We are understanding the ways people learn and how to reach them more quickly and effectively,`` said Caspar, who has worked with Sweetser for the last seven years to develop the program.

Learning ``modes,`` he said, are the center`s key to instructing, and they aren`t just for beginners` classes. Saddleback`s development of learning modes in ski instruction came from a past student, Beth Lohman, an educator of children.

LOHMAN HAD trouble grasping her instructor`s explanations in the class, and as an expert in helping people learn, she knew there are three predominant ways, or modes, in which people learn: visual (by seeing), auditory (by hearing) and kinesthetic (by doing); usually one learns through a combination of modes. Lohman, who became educational director at Saddleback, is a visual learner.

``In ski teaching, Beth told us the only way a visual learner can make any sense of that class is to see the exercise done,`` Caspar said. ``You must do it first for the visual learner. Auditory learners must have it explained thoroughly. For the people who are predominantly kinesthetic, it wouldn`t help for them to watch or hear it explained. They have to do it. Set them up in the situation where they can do what you expect of them.``

The learning center`s principles of instruction are similar to those presented by Timothy Gallwey and Bob Kriegel in their book ``Inner Skiing``

(Bantam Books, $3.50). According to Caspar, some principles of inner skiing are finding approval with the Professional Ski Instructors of America.

``The examining board of PSIA (for ski instructors seeking certification) will want to know that the instructor has read literature on inner skiing and is aware of the different learning modes,`` said Caspar. Saddleback`s learning center is certified by the PSIA.

``When we started the program, it was somewhat off the wall and radical,`` Caspar said, ``but due to changes in the industry, we have become much more mainlined.``

INNER SKIING, however, may be too esoteric for a lot of people, and reading a book is not going to teach the visual or kinesthetic learner to ski. According to Caspar, ski instruction at Saddleback meshes the use of learning modes with the thought-freeing and body-relaxing principles of inner skiing.

In a typical class at Saddleback the instructor teaches people to learn as fast as they can learn but without pressure. ``People tend to try too hard,`` Casper said. ``We want people to try easy. When you try hard, the body stiffens, and we want relaxation of the body. Tension causes all kinds of problems.``

Saddleback`s instructors have to look for clues to a student`s learning mode. ``Visual learners are watching you closely. `I didn`t quite see what you meant` is a common clue to their learning mode. Auditory learners will ask for repeats of instructions.